Progress.

Something great happened last week with one of my kids who's learning to read. He did something terrific. When it happened I was so excited, but then later I was thinking about it and I could remember the excitement and the pride but not the event, only that it was very small, not something anyone would have noticed except me--I'm not sure A. even registered it.

A couple days later, I remembered what it was.

When we started working together he'd always put a heading on the page, his name sloppy and the date written 5/5/08. One of the first things I asked him to do was write it out, spelling out the month. He groaned every time, but we talked about how we become better writers through every little bit of practice, and writing the date is a quick easy way to practice. He gets that, and I get why he doesn't want to deal. But on Thursday, I glanced at the heading and he'd written "May 1, 2008."

(Yeah, it was a different battle in February for multiple reasons, but hey--progress. It's one indicator, and I'm generally impressed with A. these days. I always have been, actually--when you can't read but you're interested and curious about the world, you pay better attention and notice more stuff than just about anybody else, your teachers included. And when it's all in your head, you can just pull things out and make fabulous connections that other people would need the book in front of them to notice. Any class discussion is better if A. is in[to] it.)